Preliminary Air France 447 black box info! (Preliminary, in air crash investigations, means "take with a grain of salt.") So, according to reporters, the airspeed sensors got all icy, and the autopilot turned off, and the plane stalled, and then... well. It's definitely premature to assign any blame to the co-pilots who were in the cockpit, so we won't! These reports still seem incomplete: even small-craft pilots-in-training know what to do in a stall: you pick up speed, using something really complex called "gravity," and you un-stall. (According to another reporter, the plane was in a steep climb instead.) READ MORE

The newspapers are doing a terrible, horrible job with Air France Flight 447. The most hilarious passage yet comes from today's New York Post: "Perhaps no one will ever know how passengers reacted in those fatal 14 minutes-whether they screamed, grabbed for the oxygen masks or sat in silent prayer." Or maybe they had a sing-a-long to Beatles songs! Or maybe they all joined in covens to worship Satan! Ludicrous. But the lunacy is everywhere. From Reuters: "extreme turbulence or decompression during stormy weather might have caused the disaster." Yes, or not! READ MORE